Barcelona Summary and Analysis

Barcelona is the intellectual capital of Spain. The narrator decides to go to Barcelona one day out of the blue while he is visiting in Granada. On his way up, he stops in the city of Guadix and gets out to talk to the locals. One man tells him that almost all of the sensible men leave Andalucia and go to Germany where they come back to Spain only to marry. They don't go back to their hometowns, however, because they end up going to Barcelona, where they stay. If they don't go to Germany, they end up in Barcelona anyways to make a better living. When the man uttered the word Barcelona, he said it as if it were a benediction, a saving place where a person could turn his or her life around. He says that life in Barcelona...